Information Technology Used for the Business Trip
This chapter provides a high-level explanation for the technology and standards used for the business trip described in Chapter 1. Many services and supporting technologies came together in the business trip story, including documents and customer data from internal systems, an external customer relationship management (CRM) service, calendar services, a travel website, a car rental service, and more.
Keeping Track of Detailed Customer Data
Remember that C. R.’s organization decided it was important to keep a significant amount of data on each of its customers. C. R.’s organization did not always have data in one place. Before the organization decided to develop a service-oriented architecture (SOA), some customer contact information was in its CRM system, some data was in the accounting system, and still more data was scattered in other internal systems and in such places as the representative personal records and trip reports.
C. R.’s organization first tried to consolidate its customer data using an enterprise data warehouse. As part of that process, C. R.’s organization decided it was time to establish some standards that would help it when using Web services. The first standards effort was to research semantic vocabularies and find one it could adopt and augment with vocabulary unique to the organization. The second effort was to decide on the Web services message protocol that it would use with this semantic vocabulary for its internal systems and services. This protocol was used to communicate with the new enterprise data warehouse.
It was not long after establishing the enterprise data warehouse that C. R.’s organization realized that it underestimated the growth of the data and that the forecasted demands on the business intelligence (BI)/analytics systems would outstrip the resources of its data center. So, it chose to work with a virtual private cloud provider that had a database management system that could handle the “big data” C. R.’s organization was generating on its customers. The cloud provider had the flexibility—called elasticity—to devote more resources on demand for the peak uses of the BI/analytics services. Also, the tools the cloud provider had made it easy to develop custom smartphone applications that use the application programming interfaces (APIs) needed to access the data and interact with the BI/analytic services. The virtual private cloud provided C. R.’s organization with the level of security that it wanted for its data.
Using Virtual Personal Assistants
Virtual personal assistants (VPAs) are central to this story. C. R’s VPA is software and, in our story, it uses artificial intelligence to reason and learn from experience. The wealth of connections available on the Internet makes it possible to create various types of VPAs that can take advantage of those connections.
Figure 2.1 illustrates that C. R.’s VPA has a component that is a service much like other services in the cloud. C. R.’s smartphone interacts with the VPA component in the cloud. The VPA service in the cloud acts independently.
Figure 2.1 Services and data interchange related to C. R.’s business trip.
Managing C. R.’s Business Trip
C. R.’s VPA managed the business trip. It was able to gather information from different services, make travel arrangements, monitor data feeds, “jump” in at the last moment when needed, and provide C. R. with just the information he needed. Thereby, C. R. was able to do what he does best (schmoozing with customers) without overburdening him with having to manage his trip himself or sort through a flood of information.
One illustration of the VPA’s role with various services was how it “knew” to monitor traffic information from the local Department of Transportation (DOT) the morning C. R. needed to get to the airport. The accident with a chemical spill that closed a road was also noted by thousands of other VPAs. The DOT service had the capability to negotiate with all those VPAs to come up with a plan to route traffic around the accident. All that C. R. had to do was realize why his wake-up alarm was earlier than expected, and to follow his VPA’s suggested detour to the airport that the DOT provided to the VPA.
Augmenting C. R.’s Experiences
C. R.’s VPA also interacted with his eyeglasses that were augmented with a heads-up display, an earpiece, and a camera. His VPA was able to “appear” whenever needed by accessing a myriad of services in the cloud so that it could help C. R. negotiate the city streets, avoid food allergies, translate a menu from French to English, learn more about the art he was viewing, and so on.
Commoditizing Services
Some services are likely to become commodities. Car rental services, for example, will need to agree on certain standards so that they can interact with travel agency and airline services. Those standards could very well mean that it is easy for any consumer (or VPA) to switch car rental services.
In the introductory story in Chapter 1, there are similar standards for cloud-based services for hotels, trains, subways, airports, museums, and so on.
Viewing All Services the Same Way
Although the semantic vocabulary and message protocol may vary among services, in a sense, they all appear the same. C. R. or his VPA do not need to know if a service is in a public cloud, a virtual private cloud, or supported by an aging internal system in C. R.’s organization. The interaction is similar and there is no need to know where a service is physically located.
Summary
In all likelihood, there are probably many hundreds of services used during C. R.’s business trip. There are also SOAs assembled from the services. C. R.’s organization has an SOA that mixes public and virtual private cloud computing with the non-cloud computing of its internal systems. Many of the services shown may have their own SOA. Among those that might include the airlines, car rental, and local DOT. The VPA component also undoubtedly has a sophisticated SOA. Chapter 3 will explain SOAs and Web services.